


Gods in their Seasons

by fresne



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Cat1, F/M, Literature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>BATTER my heart, five person'd Gods; for, you<br/>As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;<br/>That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend<br/>Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intercalendary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



> The following may be considered as inspiration for my work and inspiration for my dialogue, possibly even quotes because apt quotes are cool:  
> The poems are by (with some alterations to fit a five Gods schema)  
> Vittoria Collona  
> Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi  
> John Donne  
> Louise Labe  
> Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi  
> Also, the burning heart dream is a reference to a dream/poem by Dante Alighieri from the Vita Nuova, and the dark wood references the first line of Dante's Inferno.

_The great Father draws the soul to heaven_  
 _Bound with string of love, and the knot is tied_  
 _By the Dear Mother's hand; and so lovely a manner,_  
 _No less than the act itself, contents the heart._  
 _Such is it that I feel a subtle, living ardour_  
 _so penetrate within that, burning, I rejoice,_  
 _and I listen and hear a clear, high sound_  
 _that recalls me to true honor and glory._  
 _Oh steps of faith and charity and hope,_  
 _and of the humility that exalts mankind,_  
 _make us a ladder leading up to highest heaven,_  
 _Where the blessed souls, together united,_  
 _one after the other, from last to first, all_  
 _gaze at themselves in the great eternal mirror._

 

The vision was stripped from her eyes. 

Yet, Ista could feel the ink of the curse that clung to her children. Her children. She clutched at Teidez. He wailed to high heaven. She wanted to echo that cry. She certainly felt as helpless as a baby. She had as few weapons. Little Iselle looked at Ista with wide solemn eyes. She crept into Ista's lap to be comforted.

What comfort could Ista give with this threat surrounding them?

She did what she could. She wept at the temple. She cried out for the Mother to return to her. The sight did not return. The ghosts that hovered all around her remained hidden. The smudge shadow around her children remained out of sight. They were not out of mind.

The Mother had withdrawn her gifts. Because of what had been done. No. Ista must turn to face it. What Ista had done or not done. No. What she and Ias had done.

Ias had turned his face to the wall and died.

Bastard's Day came and inserted itself its way to balancing a year already so out of balance. 

Even unbalanced, Ista could not turn her face to the wall. Not while there was a hope that the brutal Gods would hear her.

She put ashes in her hair. She put on sackcloth. She prayed. She prayed every day. She went to the temple. She lay prostrate there praying for the gifts of the Gods. The God's gifts were actually curses. She couldn’t think of anything else that she could do but pray. She begged the Arch Divine for his assistance. She told him of the curse that lay on them all. She told them of the ghosts in Cardegros. She told him of the curse spilled by Fonsa the Fairly Wise.

He smiled. He nodded. She could see in his eyes that he thought her mad.

Her Mother and her Father came to Cardegros. She told them that there was a curse on Chalion. She told them the truth. She told them of the danger to Iselle and Tiedez. She told them.

No.

She told her Mother.

Her Mother said, "Ista, I know that you are grieving, but you must control yourself." Her Mother washed the ashes out of her hair with her own hands. Her Mother ordered new clothes made in mourning colors and made her wear them. Her Mother tisked over Ista. She cooed over her grandchildren. Her Mother said, "You're coming home with us."

She said it in such a certain tone that Ista almost felt the grip of the curse loosen. Almost. Valenda was not her home. She'd been all too eager to shed it for the glamor of court. Warm, clean Valenda.

Perhaps distance would lighten the smoke on her children.

Perhaps the Gods would hear her better from that clean bright place.

Home was where, when she had no other place, they would give her time for the burden of prayer.

They left in a long train of efficiency. Her Mother would stand for no less. Listening to her Mother organize everyone, Ista closed eyes. She tried to imagine that the Mother had taken her in again.

She opened them as the carriage hit a rut in the road. They all thumped. Her Mother grumbled at the state of the roads.

Ista smiled grimly then. She had the measure of the God's humor now.


	2. Summer

_Lady of Summer,_  
You are song, a wished-for song.  
Go through the ear to the center,  
where the sky is, where wind,  
where silent knowing. 

_Put seeds and cover them._  
Blades will sprout  
where you do your work. 

~~~~~

Bergon kept his eyes firmly on the dark outline of the jagged peaks of the Serrated Mountain against the pearling of the pre-dawn sky. He counted the peaks like so many sky pointing fingers one by one. It was that or glance again and again at Mama walking beside him up the path.

Royina and Royse of Ibra they were, but everyone walked on foot who came to the Serrated Mountain in search of a blessing. As this was the morning of the Lady of Summer's day, they were but two of the many pilgrims in the long line heading up to the Mother's shrine near the mountain top.

His eyes were so firmly on the sky that he didn't see the rock or root that tripped him. He pitched forward and would have fallen, but for Mama's hand on his arm. She tisked. "Careful, Danni. Too much counting stars and you'll pitch right off the mountain."

Her hand was thin and cold. Far colder than the warm Summer's morning warranted.

He nodded and made himself say, "If I were counting stars, it would be a short count. All that's left is the morning star. I was counting peaks."

She chuckled and linked her arm through his. "There are certainly enough of those." He could feel the way the flesh of her arm hung loose on the bone as if she were already getting ready to cast off her body, but no. There was still time.

They were going to go to the holy shrine of the Black Mother on the Serrated Mountain and there was still time. In the past, pilgrims had been granted blessings of healing. He'd seen the March of Sergif with his eyes freed of the clouding that had threatened to strike him blind. Father had said the cure had more to do with his doctor, but one foot in front of the other, Bergon had to believe in the possibility of a miracle.

The group of pilgrims ahead of them were singing songs in praise of the Mother. When Bergon had asked Mama if they should sing too, she'd said, "Danni, the Gods have blessed me with many gifts, and I count among them the voice of a gull."

They'd climbed mostly in fits of conversation.

The sky was growing brighter. He said, "Do you think we'll make it to the shrine before dawn?"

"At the pace we're going, we might make it by Father's day." She didn't suggest that they walk past the singers. Just three months ago, she would have. Even when he'd been little, his Mama had never walked slowly. Now she kept the creeping pace with the rest of the line. "Still," she squeezed his arm, "I didn't think your cobble-pocked scapegrace of a brother would ever give up their siege before Father's Day. I promised myself if the siege was lifted in the right time, I'd make my way here. Admittedly, I'd hoped for a miracle." Bergon stiffened. Mama, being who she was, lightly jabbed his side with her elbow. "One of those divine plagues of flies the Divine at Girona was always going on about."

She wanted him to laugh. He knew that she wanted him to laugh, but he didn't have a laugh inside him. He had fear and worry and a repeated refrain that there was still time. But if he could not give a laugh now, he could remind her of previous laughter. "Remember the look on the Divine's face when you slapped at one of the sacred flies and you said that you were just telling it to get over its lazy ways and get to work."

Mama chuckled. "He did turn a remarkable shade of purple."

They came to a set of worn stairs carved in the stone. They had to go single file here. Mama went ahead of him and her every slow moving step was a reminder of everything that was wrong.

Bergon told himself that soon everything would be fine. He counted steps. It was something to think about.

As they reached the top of the stairs, the sun peeked over the far horizon of the hills over distant Zagosur and Bergon had to wonder how Mama had planned it so well.

They went through the courtyard into the narrow entryway to the shrine. It was a wide cavernous space of flickering darkness. On a central dais, there was a statue of the Mother carved in black wood and clothed in gold. The infant Son smiled from her left knee. The infant Daughter laughed from her right knee. The Mother's belly was round with child, the Bastard.

The statue had been found by a shepherd in a nearby cave four centuries ago. Legend had it that when they'd tried to move the Mother off the mountain, she'd grown too heavy to move so they'd built the shrine around her.

Bergon cared only that the Mother heard his prayer. The Mother smiled kindly at him. He knelt on the woven rug in front of her and with all his heart sent his prayer to her. "Please, Lady of Summer." He didn't really have words. He wanted the tumor gone from Mama's breast. He wanted her well. He wanted her to walk too fast and make a dozen Divines turn purple. He wanted her to wait out infinitely long sieges.

All the words he had were, "Please. Please. Please." He trusted that the Lady of Summer understood.

He'd have stayed there all day praying, but even a Royse had to give way to other pilgrims. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet and lit a candle in the mass blazing next to the statue.

He was not going to ask. He should not ask. He said, "Do you think the Mother will grant your prayer? Do you think she'd grant you a miracle of healing?"

Mama brushed his hair back from his face. "Oh, Danni, I didn't come here to pray for me." She kissed his cheek. Her lips were dry and cool, but her breath was warm. "I came here to ask her to send someone to watch over you when I'm gone." Her smile was a candle's shadow. "Now that we've been properly humble, time to present you to the temple Divine. See how he's hovering? He wants something. This is a rich shrine. It would be good if he owed you something."

He pulled on the mask of Royse and went to be presented.


	3. Winter

_BATTER my heart, five person'd Gods; for, you_  
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;  
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend  
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.  
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,  
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,  
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,  
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.  
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved faine,  
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:  
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again;  
Take me to you, imprison me for I  
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,  
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

 

~~~~~~~~

In honor of the Father's Day, their besiegers had been kind enough to stop pelting the stone walls of the fortress with rocks, burning refuse, and, in one case, a diseased cow.

Palli's belly cramped in on itself as the icy wind wafted up the smell of roasting meat from the fires in the Roknari camp below.

Palli inhaled and held the scent as long as he could in his lungs.

Caz standing next to him said, "Careful, if you eat too heavily at our Father's table, you won't be fit for duty later."

Palli exhaled with a laugh. "But it would be a discourtesy not to have a taste of everything he has laid out for us."

Caz grinned a smile so fey that Palli halfway expected him suggest they overleap the walls and make away with some part of the feast below. Instead he breathed in deeply. When he let out his breath, he said, "Now all that's left is our postprandial nap."

Which is to say they spent the rare peaceful day inventorying their pitiful stores, shoring up the Eastern wall, and grabbing an all too short nap in the barracks.

Palli felt like he'd no more than closed his eyes, but that Carner from the first watch was shaking him awake. "It's night, sir. Roknari are at the Eastern wall."

On the next pallet over, he saw Caz strapping on his sword even as he blinked the sleep from his eyes.

Palli pushed himself up and ignored the twinges and aches throughout his body. Outside, the night was clear and all the more bitter bone cold for it. Father Winter was in his season. High above the sky flashed with the rippling white lights that indicated that the Father was near.

They spent the early night being pounded by a bombardment of burning pitch and stone from the siege engines which huddled below the ridgeline. The thick walls reinforced with dirt held true.

The night stretched on as they threw back what was sent at them. Caz signalled the catapult's release of a massive rock. "Let's share our bounty." That rock hit one of the siege engines, which creaked and tilted over to the men's cheers.

"We do have plenty of rocks at Gortoget," muttered Palli and went to direct the next load of them to the walls.

The night stretched into a sort of infinite series of hours of pushing stone and falling fire.

Suddenly speeding up an hour or so before dawn, the Roknari made their attempt to breach the walls. Throwing waves of men at the walls.

A grappling hook sailed over the parapet, and, almost faster than Palli could think, Caz reached for it. The line went suddenly taunt and Caz cried out. Blood gushed from the fingers of his left hand, two of their ends now severed on the ground.

Caz yelled something at Palli, who couldn't hear and yet knew what Caz had said. Palli cut the hook's line. All the while screaming at the men to drop a rain of rocks on the climbing bastards.

Palli sent a steady stream of curses to the Bastard and all his demons in their hell, as he helped Caz up. Caz, madman that he was, gone all grey, said, "I'm fine." So clearly untrue as to make other lies blush. Still, the men needed their commander. Caz needed to stand. Palli helped him up. He gave Caz his own leather belt to clench between his teeth as Palli heated a stone in one of the torches and then used it to cauterize Caz's wounds. He was very not fine. Palli propped Caz up through the rest of the night.

By morning, the Roknari had slunk back to their camp. The valley smelled less of feasting and had returned to the battlefield stench.

As they staggered back to barracks, Caz coughed and waved his wrecked left hand, "I'll never play the lute again." It was said with such good humor that Palli did the only thing he could.

He said, "Too bad. Here I was hoping you'd teach me to play."

Caz nodded palely at him, and Palli knew he'd said the right thing, or some right thing.

He longed for his pallet. Instead he hunted down a rat in the cellar. It was a large fat one. The Gods in their Heaven knew how.

As he returned, Caz was clutching at Palli's belt in his right hand. Sweat was beaded on his brow for all the small fire burning dung in the barrack's hearth did little to battle the cold and much to foul the air. Palli held up the rat. "Roasted or pan fried?"

"Oh," Caz winced slightly. "Pan fried and a glass of well water."

Palli went to position the cast iron kettle in the fire, and they settled to their feast by dung light.

They raised cups of water to each other. "Happy Father's Day."


	4. Autumn

_Bright Son, roving far across the sky,_  
Oh, listen to me sing in plaintive tones  
Of heavy cares and sorrows that are known  
As long as your fair face shines forth on high. 

_I feel no solace when my wakeful eye_  
Is watching you bear witness to my own  
Hard life. What can I do, lost and alone,  
But greet my restful bed with tears and sighs. 

_Now peacefulness and soft repose may come_  
To those who have endured the day and keep  
Their dreamings well in hand for quiet sleep, 

_But when I dream, Mother moves into view._  
I think of her Son, so far from home  
And I must cry in pain the whole night through. 

~~~~

The day before they put into port in Saida, the ocean was as still as a warped pane of glass. Caz smiled to see the sun shining on the water. He smiled genially at Nand, his sweating fellow slave at the oar on the left. The right being vacant since the oar-master turned on poor Jiro for providing some poor furtive affections and cast off to Jiro scream on the waves.

Caz had sent a quick prayer that Jiro prove a weak swimmer and sink quickly.

Nand glared at him and grumbled into their dipping, dripping labor that ruptured the calm of the sea with their slicing blades. Behind them, the drum-master beat the drum that was the heartbeat that they rowed to.

The sun slipped over the blue horizon.

He put his back into the steady dip and turn of the oars. He planned each hour and no further with great care. He planned the life and fall of the oars, the beat of the drums, and the way the moon moved into the sky. It was a round yellow Hunter's moon that glowed close in a way that meant the Son was present.

They rowed through the night across that becalmed sea as the moon gazed down into the silvered mirror of the water.

In the morning, the wind picked up as they made port. Caz laughed to feel the breeze flutter against his face. "Just when it's the least use." The world vastly amused him. He was even amused by Dand's grumbled curse at Caz's smile.

The second mate saw to it that the slave's feet were all freshly lashed to prevent any attempt to walk off. Shackled as he was, blood dripping from the pads of his feet, that amused Caz, too. Dand scooped up water from the bay, intending to cleanse his cuts perhaps. Caz laughed and pointed to the refuse bobbing next to the dock. Dand let the water dribble away.

Caz slept at his bench with the sun shining down. He drowsed through the afternoon's rare ease. He smiled at the seagulls glaring with gold coin eyes from the dock. He'd have whistled to them, but his lips were too chapped and in any case, Dand threatened to choke him if he did. His masters returned as the sun was making its way to set. Away from the rotting garbage and the docks.

The quartermaster returned with sealed barrels of salted meats, water, oranges, and a new face. A boy of about fifteen, who moved with the stiff gate of the recipient of a recent harsh beating. Caz had had reason to see that movement all too often since the infinite series of hours since he'd arrived.

Caz smiled at the fresh face of the boy as he was shoved roughly onto the seat next to him and shackled in place. Caz said, "Good evening, young sir." His smile cracked the fissures in his lips, but a new face deserved a little blood.

The boy said, "What? I… I don't. I… I was kidnapped." He looked back at the oar-master, but Caz was pleased to see that the boy had the wit to merely whisper. "I shouldn't be here." Caz himself had not been so circumspect those endless hours ago.

Caz smiled his cracked lip smile. "I agree." He ripped off a small portion of the hem of his tunic. It was so frayed, what was a little bit more? "Here. Wrap this around your ankles. Otherwise you'll get sores." He shifted the shackles around his own ankles and grinned at the scars he found there.

Scars were wonderful things. They meant he was still alive. He smiled to think of the scars this boy, this stranger, this new and wonderful soul would form as he healed.

They weren't but two hours out to sea, when the boy, Danni, had gone from olive tan to red as a red, red rose. A peeling, sweating, stinking rose bleeding from blisters on his hands with that fevered sheen that hinted he'd be collapsed on the floor within the hour. Caz gave Danni half his water ration.

Nand said, "If you're giving your ration away, I'll take the other part."

Caz smiled at the beautiful humor of that remark. Nand was an old hand at the oar and was not near to fainting.

Danni gulped the water down. After an embarrassed pause, he said, "Thank you." He said it prettily enough. Someone had taken care with his manners.

Caz smiled to hear those thanks. He measured the hours and gave some small advice where he could. How to move the oar. How to care for the skin peeling in long strips off the boy's arms and face. Time measured in hours passed. Danni turned as brown as a nut. For all that in that hour, everyone was beautiful to Caz, he could have wept at this reminder of the fleeting beauty of youth. He might have wept if he could still cry.

The wind freshened and the slaves at their benches were given a break, as a carter might give his team of mules some short ease before assaying the mountain. The drum beat stopped its heartbeat and the sun set with a sleepy shrug at the clear sky. The green light flashed on the horizon to indicate that the Mother was near, even as the full moon once more glowed with the Son's presence. 

The oar-master approached their bench and whispered something to young Danni. Caz felt something twist in his belly. It felt very far away and very near. The oar-master put his hand on Danni's thigh. The second mate on watch was looking determinedly at the shining path the sun had taken.

Danni shoved oar-master back with a shout. In the gathering darkness, Caz could see the oar-master's next step and his next. He saw the next hour very clearly then as the oar-master literally lashed out at Danni.

Just as clearly, it seemed to him that all he had to do was get up, which he did. All he had to do was ram his knee into the oar-master's groin hard enough to drive those parts back up inside of him for escape, which he did. All he had to do was wrap the chain around the oar-master's neck and pull, which he did.

They pulled him off, of course. He planned the next hour laughing as they flayed the skin of his back into a pretty mess. He laughed and laughed and laughed. This had the expected effect, and they quite broke him. He was fairly certain there was no putting himself back together again. No more scars from these wounds. The second mate was telling the oar-master that Caz had finally gone completely mad and was not worth another meal.

Still, they sat him at his bench to slump against the oar chuckling.

Through the haze of it all, he half heard his masters cursing and shouting, and the slaves at their oars rowing. The drum was beating like a rapidly running heart. The slaves were not rowing anywhere near that fast. They kept fouling their oars. Clattering against each other rather than smoothly pulling at the water. He could see the rapid lash of whips. Two benches ahead of them, the second mate beheaded a man. This did not speed things up. There was a sudden flash and Nand had no head. Blood splashed in Caz's mouth. It tasted of copper and meat.

He laughed and laughed until the Ibran ships surrounded them completely.

Then it seemed that he did still have some tears. He sat on the deck weeping and twitching himself to sleep and found himself on waking in the Temple Hospital of the Mother's Mercy in Zagosur.

He wept to see the sun in the sky and could only wonder at what had become of his fellow slaves.


	5. Spring

_Today, like every other day, we wake up empty_  
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study  
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. 

_Let the beauty we love be what we do.  
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground._

~~~~  
Betriz’ day had been long. She'd had to slip out of her wedded bed at sunrise to tend to Iselle in her meeting with the Provincara of the Minora islands. Caz had had to make his own way to talk ever exciting taxation reform. She offered to trade him, but he merely kissed her. "I think the discussions with the Provincara will go infinitely better if I am not there."

That was true enough.

Ending her day, she found their bed empty. But it was no mystery where Caz was.

She found Caz asleep in a slump over his desk. He was drooling onto a piece of foolscrap. This was not the first time Betriz'd found her husband thus.

Betriz smiled to see him drooling so. When she'd looked in on their children not an hour ago, their daughter had been dripping onto her doll in just that same way.

She shook him awake. "Caz, wake up. This isn't nearly as comfortable as our bed."

He blinked awake at her and smiled. She ached a little. He'd been dreaming of the Lady of Spring. She could see it in his eyes. If she didn't stop him, he would be making rhymes about her nose and pebbles. Which she was never going to let him live down. Ever.

He held out the foolscrap with sadly shortened swollen inky fingers and she read it. His handwriting was as always a horrific scrawl. She read it with the ease of long practice. The poem was fractured and lovely. She kissed the forehead that thought that poem up. She kissed his eyes, which still echoed with the Daughter of Spring's meadows. She kissed his lips, which whispered her name. He said to her, "Betriz, I dreamed that halfway through the journey of our lives, I found myself lost in a dark wood." He kissed her neck. She could feel his breath skimming across her skin. "You raced by me on a horse." He worked his way down to her collarbone, because Caz always paid attention to the non-obvious lines of her. "Love was on fire." He worshiped at the hollow over the bone. "Love plucked out my heart and gave it to you."

She breathed in sharply and arched her neck into his kiss. "What did I do with your heart?" Her own was beating like a drum even after all these years. Still. Always.

"You ate it." He kissed the hollow of her throat.

She shoved him. "What! That is not!" He was smiling at her. Her Caz was smiling like a loon and love shone out of his eyes. There was nothing for it, but for her to drag him off to their bed. She'd eaten his heart after all.

Later, as she fell asleep in their wedded bed, she could hear the young birds in the nest outside their window chirping sleepily for their breakfast. She smiled softly at the voice of the Daughter of Spring and slipped away into her own dreams.


	6. [podfic] Gods in their Seasons

Music Credit: Musici di San Marco - Vivaldi's Four Seasons (autumn slightly tortured) and Saint Saens - Danse Macabre  
Length: 36:18

[Listen to this story](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/play/p3svmk/GodsInTheirSeasons.mp3)  
[Download this story (right click and save)](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/web/p3svmk/GodsInTheirSeasons.mp3)

[Archived here](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/gods-in-their-seasons)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, oh, mystery Beta reader. It was capriciousK!
> 
> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
